[[quoteright:239:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Kafkaresize.jpg]][[caption-width-right:239:A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.]]

->''"Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive, needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate... But with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins."''

Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was one of the major German-language fiction writers of the 20th century. His unique body of writing--much of which is incomplete and was mainly published posthumously--is among the most influential in Western literature. His stories, such as ''Literature/TheMetamorphosis'' (1915), and novels, including ''The Trial'' (1925) and ''The Castle'' (1926), concern troubled individuals in a nightmarishly impersonal, modern, and bureaucratic world.

Not to be confused with Creator/FrankCapra, Music/FrankZappa, or [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI Kefka]]. And most certainly not [[Manga/SayonaraZetsubouSensei Kafuka Fuura]].----!!This author's work includes examples of:* AlternateCharacterInterpretation: In-work in ''The Trial'' when the prison chaplain tells Josef the story [[https://records.viu.ca/~Johnstoi/kafka/beforethelaw.htm "Before the Law."]] Is the gatekeeper an ObstructiveBureaucrat who misled the man into keeping him out until he was too old to enter, or is he a [[WhatMeasureIsAMook tragic hero]] beholden to the Law while the man is free to enter, but chooses not to?[[invoked]]* AmbiguouslyJewish: Kafka's work doesn't directly ever reference his Jewish background, but the Jewish angst somehow seems to seep through anyway.* AuthorAvatar: A lot of his characters at least share some traits with him, such as a domineering father and a creative desire stifled by the doldrums of everyday life. A couple of them are named “K“.* AuthorsOfQuote: Kafka's aphorisms are often reprinted, mostly as epigrams at the start of a book.* BewilderingPunishment: The central point of ''The Trial''.* BodyHorror: Some of his characters are physically marred by the traumas they undergo.* CallingTheOldManOut: Almost. ''Letter to His Father'', which was never given to his dad.* ChewToy: The protagonists of his books hardly ever seem able to catch a break.** Karl Rossman, protagonist of ''Amerika'', unwillingly gets the family maid pregnant, gets sent off to America by his father without any practical skills he could make a decent living with, finds a long-lost uncle, only to be thrown out after he visits an acquaintance against his uncle's will, gets an alright job as a lift boy, is dismissed due to the Head Porter who has it in for Karl because he does't greet the Porter politely and regularly, falls in with rogues (not the lovable kind), etc.* CrapsackWorld: The late 19th-early 20th Century landscape of his stories.* DeadArtistsAreBetter: The titular character from "The Hunger Artist." Not to mention Kafka himself.** {{Subverted}} in "Josephine the Singer", though: after she, representing culture in general, dies, nobody will remember her.** Kafka himself of course died before attaining universal fame. * {{Determinator}}: K in ''The Castle''. {{Deconstructed}}: all his efforts are in vain. He would be happier if he just gave up.* DisproportionateRetribution: "The Judgement" among others.* DownerEnding: The only books that do not have one are the books Kafka never finished.* FishOutOfWater: Karl Rossman in America.* IceCreamKoan: Deliberately.* KafkaKomedy: Franz Kafka is the TropeNamer. When read the right way by a person with a very dark sense of humor, his books can be genuinely funny. According to his friends, Kafka himself would sometimes laugh out loud while reading his own work.** Similarly, Creator/OrsonWelles always considered his film adaptation of ''The Trial'' to be a black comedy, and considered it wildly funny himself.* KangarooCourt: ''The Trial'', in which the prisoner, Josef K, is never told what the charge is and cannot defend himself. Therefore, he is convicted and then sentenced to death without evidence of anything.* {{Koan}}: "Before the Law, there stands a guard..."* MagicRealism: For example, strange, unexplained transformations.* {{Metamorphosis}}: Literature/TheMetamorphosis, of course.* MindScrew: What is ''really'' his works' meaning?* MundaneFantastic: The fantastic is usually seen as completely mundane by almost everyone who is not the protagonist.* NoEnding: His novels.* ObstructiveBureaucrat: In "Before the Law" or "Vor dem Gesetz", the doorkeeper acts as the literal and symbolic obstructive bureaucrat, blocking the man from the country from getting admittance to the Law.* OneLetterName: K. in ''The Castle'' and Joseph K. in ''The Trial''.* OntologicalMystery: ''The Trial'' is a cynical, bureaucratic example.* OurMonstersAreWeird - Several of his vignettes feature rather bizarre and fantastic creatures, the oddest perhaps being the Odradek in his short story "The Cares of a Family Man."* OutOfOrder: ''The Trial'' contains a lot of self-contained chapters, and it is unclear in what order Kafka intended them to be read.* {{Recut}}: In adapting ''The Trial'', [[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Tr9DZP_ahcYJ:tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/OrsonWelles+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk Orson Welles]] rearranged the order of Kafka’s chapters. In this version, the chapter line-up read 1, 4, 2, 5, 6, 3, 8, 7, 9, 10. However, the order of Kafka's chapters was arranged by his literary executor, Max Brod, after the writer's death, and this order is not definitive. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Trial_(1962_film)&oldid=639673797#Production Source]]* SchizoTech: The 1994 film version of ''The Castle'' is set in a ClockPunk setting, with medieval architecture, early automobiles, and phones.* ShaggyDogStory: [[ShootTheShaggyDog The dark kind.]]* ShootTheShaggyDog: Almost everything by Kafka falls into this category.* SliceOfLife: His collected writings contain one-page stories that don't really have a point to them, apart from [[SceneryPorn describing an interesting scene]] and [[SeinfeldianConversation observing things about it.]]** His Fandom, however, managed to take this to a whole new level by [[http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8791.html publishing the various insurance claim reports Kafka wrote for his day job as a lawyer]] (particularly noteworthy works include "Fixed-Rate Insurance Premiums for Small Farms Using Machinery" and "Accident Prevention in Quarries") and interpreting them in this vein. Although knowing that Kafka used to work in law probably puts ''TheTrial'' into [[WriteWhatYouKnow a new light]].* SurrealHorror: His protagonists are often utterly (and sometimes fatally) bewildered by circumstances that would be funny if the consequences were less hideous.* TortureTechnician: The Officer from "In the Penal Colony" who uses an execution device with needles to mark the crime the person is being executed for (the person dies eventually after several hours of pain from either shock or blood loss)* UnreliableNarrator: For example in the short story ''The Judgement'', where at first the narrator seems to be pretty much identical with protagonist Georg Bendemann, bragging what a considerate person he is because he doesn't tell his unfortunate friend abroad what a happy, successful life he has. How nice and understandable, thinks the reader - until Bendemann's father calls him out and accuses him of being a liar, so that we have to start questioning Bendemann's motives and if the friend abroad actually exists.* UselessProtagonist: Many of his works have protagonists who either willingly or unwillingly have no active role in how the stories progress.* WeirdnessCensor: Apart from the protagonists, very few people in his stories notice or care when something clearly out of the ordinary has happened.* WhiteCollarWorker: Kafka himself and his characters provide an [[UnbuiltTrope early]] example of this trope.* WrongGenreSavvy: Josef K in ''The Trial'' thinks he's a plucky everyman fighting against injustice. He's very, very wrong.* YankTheDogsChain: Things may start to look bright. It never pays off.----

!! Appearences in popular culture:

* He appears in a historical / flashback episode of ''Series/NorthernExposure,'' played by the series' star Rob Morrow. Yes, the show set entirely in Alaska.* In ''Film/TheProducers,'' while looking for the worst play ever written, Max reads the first line from ''Literature/TheMetamorphosis,'' and rejects it as being too good.* Creator/RobertCrumb made an analytical comic book / book about Kafka's life.* The young Indiana Jones meets him in ''Series/YoungIndianaJones."* Music/FrankZappa advises buyers of his album ''Music/WereOnlyInItForTheMoney'' to read Kafka's "In the Penal Colony" before listening to the last track.* The "Director's Cut" episode of ''WesternAnimation/HomeMovies'' features a plotline where teenage metalhead Duane attempts to persuade Brendon to film his RockOpera of [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uaaF83eVig Kafka's ''Metamorphosis,'']] which Brendon is unwilling to do, preferring to direct a film called ''Louis, Louis'' depicting a fictional encounter between Louis Pasteur and Louis Braille.-->"A, rock opera, based on Franz Kafka's ''Metamorphosis''... I don't think so."-->[[PunctuatedForEmphasis "HE! IS! FRANZ! KAF! KA! FRANZ-KAF-KA!"]]* ''Website/TheOnion'' [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEyFH-a-XoQ ran a video]] about how Prague's Franz Kafka International airport is the most alienating, dehumanizing airport in the world.* There's a ShoutOut to ''In the Penal Colony'' in ''[[Literature/BookOfTheNewSun The Shadow of the Torturer]]'' where the head torturer shows a prisoner an apparatus designed to carve slogans into someone's flesh and mentions that it isn't working properly. [[spoiler: In the original story, there is such an apparatus, which malfunctions and carves a slogan into the ''guard's'' flesh.]]* Kafka himself is the protagonist of Creator/StevenSoderbergh's 1991 film ''Kafka.''* In ''ComicBook/JohnnyTheHomicidalManiac,'' Johnny's cockroaches (although he believes them all to be one constantly regenerating cockroach) are named "Mr. Samsa," after the character from ''Literature/TheMetamorphosis.''* The works of Kafka are a major influence on ''Manga/TokyoGhoul'' and its sequel, ''Tokyo Ghoul:Re.'' Near the beginning of the series, Kaneki compares his transformation into a HalfHumanHybrid to ''Literature/TheMetamorphosis.'' It is also mentioned that oft-mentioned novelist Sen Takatsuki titled her first work ''Dear Kafka,'' hinting that she was influenced by his work. In the sequel, Kafka's short story ''A Crossbreed'' is discussed briefly and seems to be a metaphor for the relationship between HalfHumanHybrid Sasaki and his ParentalSubstitute, Arima.* The Scottish post-punk band Josef K were named after the main character of ''The Trial,'' ''The Castle,'' and ''A Dream.''* Israeli skit show ''The Jews Are Coming,'' satirizing Jewish / Israeli history and lore, featured [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms8OlGw38A8 a skit]] in which the moribund Kafka asks Max Brod to burn all of his writings, but keeps asking him to spare more and more works, to the point he wants to keep the empty pizza box in his room. [[spoiler: Finally, Brod, who got so worked up about burning ''something,'' randomly burns a piece of paper he finds... Which turns out to be [[DeathByIrony Kafka's medication prescription]] for his [[IncurableCoughOfDeath tuberculosis]]. [[CrossesTheLineTwice Kafka dies that day]].]]* The Samsa from ''TabletopGame/WerewolfTheApocalypse'', artificially-created giant shapeshifting cockroaches, are named for the main character of "Metamorphosis".* Quite a bit of ''VideoGame/ResidentEvilRevelations2'' takes ques from Kafka. The general plot of the game is about people trapped in an oppressive world where all the mean-spirited terrors are never explained while being watched over by an uncaring watcher. The main antagonist is a noted fan of Kafka and bases her plans off his works, each level is named after one of his works, and each level is proceeded by a quote from Kafka.----